The Seventh Annual Mutant Awards: 2004

Presented To Kevin Smith

Kevin Smith’s place in pop culture is similar to that of the friendly neighborhood bum. Stay with me here: when I was spending part of my childhood in southside Chicago, there was a little less gang warfare around 58th and Cicero so you could walk around the neighborhood and get to know people. And there were homeless dudes, but there was always one homeless dude (invariably bearded) who was friendly and looked like a really cool guy who just happened to live in a park and smell like sardines and dirt. You heard from neighbors that he was really good at some sort of entertainment (like playing the harmonica or knowing where all the aluminum cans were or running “find the queen” games behind the pizza shop) and that made you fond of him, but you held off on really liking him because he was still a bum and you had a new big-screen television and you didn’t want him to steal it, so you just stayed in your home and gave a little more money to charity that holiday season. And you felt good. Who wouldn’t?

Kevin Smith makes movies and writes comic books. He also owns a comic book store or two, and named his daughter after a Batman villainess. I think. I don’t know too much about Kevin Smith. I liked Overnight Delivery and when I found out he secretly wrote it I was like “no!” even though I was okay with it. When I met some Florida friends at the San Diego Comic Con one year, I went with them to the Kevin Smith panel and listened and laughed at what a funny and charming dude he was (he made dudes put the microphone close to their mouth when they tried to ask his questions, and then made fellatio jokes. That’s good stuff!). I read his “epic” (?) run on the Daredevil comic book, and tried to watch Dogma. He’s made other movies, but people are always like “dude, you need to watch Clerks! It’s the best!” and I’m like “dude, you need to drink a tall glass of shut-the-hell-up because I bow to no peer pressure!” So I haven’t seen most of Kevin Smith’s movies. Sorry, dude.

But I do like Kevin Smith. He does bits on Jay Leno and seems possessed of a genuine good temperament, so he cool as far as I’m concerned (saying “he cool” is cooler than cool). And he’s certainly a pop culture landmark, in so much if he popped up as a Trivial Pursuit question I’d be like “I can see that” and then guess Mallrats no matter what the question was, since Mallrats is what everyone has seen and talks about, it seems. So I fully support Kevin Smith for this year’s CLAAW recipient. Good work, my man!

Ah yes, an engaging, humorous, delightfully subversive and scruffily bearded champion of the common folk. But enough about Justin. Today we're here to pay homage to the wit, style and splendiferous cultitude of Kevin "Silent Bob" Smith. Aside from the fact that Drew the Enforcer (aka"Jersey Boy") kept making meaningful comments about how easily bodies can be lost in the Pine Barrens during the selection process, there was very little debate on Kevin as this year's winner. And that's fine with me. But while I adore Clerks and guiltily giggled through Dogma, what made me a fan for life was watching a long chunk of "An Evening With Kevin Smith" where our Mutie recipient traveled to several college campuses and answered the questions of the masses with good humor, razor wit, and some serious quick draw cell phone action. (You can't help but like a guy who tries to save a fan's job by calling his boss from the podium.) In any case, Kevin has the unique talent of taking mundane scraplets of life and wrapping them up in shiny bits of hilarity, obscenity and even philosophy. Or maybe it’s duct tape, I don’t know. So, for the man who made New Jersey something more than just the page between New Hampshire and New Mexico in atlases across North America, and who recognizes that cult can come from... I salute you!

Anyone can make a cult film. Well, not anyone, but at least anyone with a reasonable knowledge of monkey physics. But it's a rare duck indeed who can pull the cult trick out of a hat again and again and again to turn five low-brow, mouthy, radically different yet similarly placed films into the stuff of legend. Kevin Smith is not a perfect man, and his five Jersey "trilogy" films (plus the blipped Jersey Girl) are far from polished classic apples. However, there's just something about his style, a blending of the profane, the ridiculous, and the common New Jersey life that turned him into the People's Director. Like MRFH, Smith is Geek. The love for his films were one of the foundation stones of our website, and although his golden years might (perhaps) be gone from us now, and while there are some who understandably do not like him or his flicks, this is a director, writer and actor who brought his meagerly budgeted vision all the way to the top — a throwaway joke cameo in Scream 3.

Why honor Kevin Smith? If the fact that he’s from New Jersey isn’t enough for you (freak), consider this — Kevin Smith is you. He’s me. He’s every average guy or gal who ever hung out with his friends, juggling inconsequential pop culture minutiae and deep philosophical questions in the same conversation. He’s a regular person who could just as easily have been working in a convenience store to this day, posting about movies on the internet right alongside us. Instead he took a chance, sold his prize possessions (his comic book collection… a true geek tragedy), went massively into debt, and then just produced one of the funniest damn movies of the decade. Honestly, who can look at that and feel anything but joy and appreciation? Then, not satisfied with being the star of the cult world, he transcended its borders, producing a whole slew of hilarious films accepted by cult fans and mainstream society alike. Then he bought a comic store, created a web site, married a beautiful woman, and spawned a kid with the coolest name ever, Harley Quinn.

Yet through this last decade of wish fulfillment, Smith has consistently stayed true to his roots — he’s STILL a regular guy who likes drinking, watching Star Wars, and talking about sex. There’s something both admirable and relatable about that, and it’s why Kevin Smith is the perfect recipient of this prestigious award. Sure, Springsteen made it cool to be from Jersey back in the 80s… but Kevin’s the guy who kept it going into the 90s and beyond. Here’s to you, big guy. Snoogans.

When I came to write my contribution to this, I was going to talk about the first time I saw Clerks. The trouble was, as I pondered at my keyboard why the words weren’t flowing as they usually do, I realised that I can’t even remember when that was. Clerks, along with the rest of Kevin Smith’s films, have been ingrained into not only my moviegoing psyche, but the psyche of the Collective Cult Moviegoing Populace for as long as I can remember, and frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks everything he does is automatic cinematic gold, but at a time when my cynicism towards all things Hollywood was reaching it’s peak, Kevin Smith’s films came along and showed me that despite everything, intelligent and amazing films could indeed come from anywhere and anyone with the vision and determination to say “What the hell, I’m gonna do it this way, and let’s see someone try to stop me.”

So here’s to you, Kevin Smith. Clerks tells us “It’s important to have a job that makes a difference.” I don’t think you’re going to be stress-testing eggs any time soon.

When CLAAW nominations were due in, my thoughts immediately leapt to Kevin Smith. But alas, I thought, Kevin's WAY too young to be getting a lifetime achievement award. But here he is anyway. Shows you how much I know.

I must confess, I'm not a fan of Clerks, and Mallrats made me giggle like a 12-year-old in spots but wasn't at the top of my list. However, Mr. Smith did win me over with Chasing Amy. I don't really LIKE Chasing Amy — it's too honest and uncomfortable for that. But that's precisely why I think it's a brilliant movie; because rarely do writers include such blunt reflections of themselves and their lives. And life just got better with Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob strike back. Mr. Smith must also be commended for his acting ability. Silent Bob (and the annoying but necessary foil of Jay) is one of the most entertaining characters in the movies, without ever saying a word. (Aside from his meaningful sentence or two per movie.) Acting, writing, AND directing. Does anyone deserve this more?

Not this year.

In addition to being a dead ringer for our very own Head Mutant, Kevin Smith's talents include a knack for sneaking into our dorm rooms, our living rooms, our bathrooms, our very lives, and extracting conversations that most people wouldn't admit to having had in the first place, but know full well they have. No one wants to admit they've talked about contractors dying on the Death Star, but here we have it, in glorious black and white: Randall and Dante debating that exact situation! It's hard not to love a filmmaker who can master the art of the geeky conversation without getting boring, and Smith's got the knack.

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